


Hear it Scratching

by GraceEliz



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Accidental Mind Tricks, Ben Cerasi: saying fuck to destiny since age thirteen, Dark, Dubcon/Noncon Elements, F/M, Inspired by Music, Obi-Wan Kenobi is Not a Jedi, Obi-Wan goes by Ben Cerasi, Obi-Wan please unfridge Satine this isn't where your destinies should have gone, Unhealthy Relationships, You know The Purple Man? neither do I but apparently that's what I've done here, closest I'll ever come to a songfic, listen to Quin please, mind tricks, not quite dubcon but jeeeeeez, satine's internal voice is Bo going "ho don't do it", tags are so hard how do I tag this, that said they are surprisingly soft, you know what - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:02:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27024739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraceEliz/pseuds/GraceEliz
Summary: He found her, that first time, in a bar.Not the sort of high-end bar that her friends used to laugh over visiting, or even a standard sort of bar where clean is the very minimum expectation, but the sort of bar where looking better than a particularly well-dressed spice runner garners attention of entirely the wrong sort. She regrets to admit that she blends in rather well.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Quinlan Vos, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Satine Kryze
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	Hear it Scratching

**Author's Note:**

> Title from That Unwanted Animal by The Amazing Devil. Go do yourself a favour: look them up and put their newer album, The Horror and the Wild, on as you read. You will not have any regrets, and will hopefully be as hooked on them as my friends and I became. At the very least, you need to listen to That Unwanted Animal and Farewell Wanderlust, you will genuinely never be the same. Quickish like, so you can read this monster I wrote.  
> "this here is not singing I'm just screaming in tune" - Farewell Wanderlust  
> "you try so hard to love me, I cannot seem to hear, 'cause you, you touch, my skin peels off like paint" - That Unwanted Animal  
> "'be good to me' I whisper and you say 'what' and I say nothing, dear" - That Unwanted Animal  
> (nearly titled this fic "devour what's truly yours" from this song too. It goes so hard, guys.)

He found her, that first time, in a bar. 

Not the sort of high-end bar that her friends used to laugh over visiting, or even a standard sort of bar where clean is the very minimum expectation, but the sort of bar where looking better than a particularly well-dressed spice runner garners attention of entirely the wrong sort. She regrets to admit that she blends in rather well. Frankly, she thinks she looks like a whore attempting to be classy in her short blue dress and tight practical leggings, but given that nobody has propositioned her yet, perhaps the whores around here are of a particular genre. Condensation wets her fingers when she taps her nails on her pint glass, and she tries to decide if the drink will stretch for another standard hour, by which point Master Jinn should have found them transport off this pathetic imitation of a Mando settlement. This place wishes it had an aura half so dangerous as the bars on Kalevela. 

“Hey, darling, you look like you could use a drink.” A red-headed young man, probably her own age, with that roughened skin texture that speaks of hard life, and all over his skin caught and smoothened by scar tissue. His eyes, sky blue-grey, are smiling into hers, and his lips are delicately pink and the sort of shape she is sure most girls would swoon over. He leans on the bar beside her, chewing at an unlit deathstick, and she wonders if he smokes them, whether a kiss from him would taste of alcohol or sticks or a mixture or something else entirely. 

“Perhaps,” she admits guardedly. Her Jedi protectors are still in the bar – she can see Master Jinn, but not Knight Artell, which isn’t concerning, because Artie really is excellent at hiding. “Why, are you offering to buy?” 

He dances a credit chip over his fingers, a simple impressive trick that whispers of greater talents – Satine very forcibly draws her mind out of the gutter – with a smirk. “For a small trade."

Don’t do it, says a voice that sounds like Bo, but she bats it away and leans towards him. “Oh? And what would that be?” 

“Mm, I’ll think of something. Ben Cerasi,” he introduces himself, his hand out for her to shake, their heads too close together for anyone to mistake this for anything but a liason. 

“Tina,” she replies, shaking firmly; he turns her hand in his grasp and kisses her knuckles, leaving her pinked. “A pleasure.” 

“The pleasure is all mine, my dear,” he purrs, and yes, that is a Coruscanti accent, High Coruscanti in fact. Where did he learn that? “How about that drink?” 

Master Jinn is no longer watching her, invested in his hand of sabacc, so she smiles, and preens under the admiration he displays, and says yes. 

The storm rages with all the fury of the ka’ra. She is reminded of the old curse, one that all children are taught and warned only to use when they wish for someone to be utterly destroyed. Lightning flashes across the black sky, lighting the abandoned buildings day-bright enough that she can see her surroundings in harsh detail, just for a flash, the afterimage disorienting. Grit and soil cake her hands from where she slipped on the path a little way back, where her boots didn’t grip the sliding mud well enough. Everything is beautiful and wild and untamed – and dangerous. Frightening. 

“Ka’ra, ni gaa’tayl,” begs the young not-yet-Duchess of the heavens above her, stars glinting between the clouds bringing sheets of icy rain with them. “Ni gaa’tayl, gedet’ye, gedet’ye. Help me, please.” Under her boots the gravel slides and splashes up her leggings, the rain soaking slowly through to her underlayers. 

“Tina!” 

Ben? That voice – that is Ben, who bought her a drink and danced in the bar with her. Is he looking for her? “Ben?” 

And suddenly he is there, in front of her, red hair plastered to his face by the rain. There’s the scratch of a short layer of scruff, water running through it, against her temple when he yanks her near, and she is near-blinded by a flash once more, but his arms are around her, sheltering her head under his cloak. How did he know to look for her? Nobody knows where she is to go if she’s recognised; nobody. She has her codes and her plans and Master Jinn’s comm number secreted in her mind. “Tuck your head in, Tina,” he coaxes, grip on her wrist strong enough to make her whimper where the weakness of her badly-healed cracks lie. 

“Ben,” the young woman manages, pulling at his grip. “Let go – my wrist,” and he does, keeping her under his cloak, ushering her into one of the abandoned homes that must once have been stunning. Now it is leaky, decrepit. 

But at least it is no longer raining on them. For a long minute, maybe several minutes, all she can do is stand gasping in the novelty of shelter, choking on her own breath. Water drips to the floor, the noise masked by the torrential downpour. 

Ben, nothing so near as breathless as her, squeezes her elbow. “You should probably strip,” he suggests when he has his breath back; she rears back at the impropriety of such an idea, aghast. 

“I will not,” Satine retorts firmly, deeply insulted for reasons she doesn’t want to examine. 

He rolls his blue-grey eyes up to the ceiling, water tracking down his face. A droplet hangs in the corner of his mouth. “Look,” tries the young man again, “if you wear those wet clothes you’ll get sick. I don’t have enough wood to burn to keep you warm enough to dry your clothes on you. You’ll have to strip off, and wear something dry of mine, and we’ll hang your stuff over some furniture and it can dry. Okay?” 

What he is saying is sensible. Satine knows it is, with every part of her brain, yet her heart is recoiling, retreating from the chance he could see her without her being prepared. If he was just some young man, she wouldn’t care; wouldn’t give a fig, and agree and be done with it. But it isn’t just any kid. It’s Ben, and she’s been enchanted by him and his red hair and scars since he first leant on the bar beside her. For a moment, she opens then closes her mouth, like a fish or a bird, wet and bedraggled like a cat in water. 

“Okay, okay,” he sighs. His eyes fix hers, pinning her where she stands; her skin burns where she can still feel the press of his skin. His shoulders roll, and she is, for a moment, distracted, tracking the motion with her eyes before snapping her gaze back to his. “Tina, get out of those wet clothes,” Ben commands, voice low and smooth; yes, yes that’s sensible. There is no use to getting sick from being wet, whispers his voice in her head, with a warm comforting brush through her mind. Coarse hands bump hers aside where she fumbles at the ties of her boots, her brain fogged over as though she’s drunk or sick – why must she get her clothes off? It’s cold, bitterly so. The brush of warmth in her mind disperses, and she can think. 

“I’m cold,” she tells him grumpily, and he smiles up at her from where he’s still crouched untying her laces. 

“You can wear my dry cloak.” 

Okay. 

In the sitting room, he pushes her into an armchair and tucks his cloak about her before kneeling to light the wood stacked in the hearth. “Stay there,” he murmurs as he rises. Of course she will, where else should she go? There is nowhere to be, not anymore, not whilst her home burns like the wood in the hearth. That warmth is back, wrapping her warmly. 

“Tina?” Ben softly asks her, minutes or months late, standing in the door. He stands, she notices, like a warrior, light and lithe. 

“Mm,” she responds, lazily drifting her gaze from the licking flames to his face. Ben looks concerned, brow wrinkled. He crouches at her feet, balanced, easy in the position. “What?” 

“May I just check your head, darling?” He sounds so worried for her she is unable to refuse him. Gently his calloused fingers trace over her cheekbone to her temple, pressing ever so gently there; it is like his cold touch spreads into her head, her very brain, all that lovely warmth from his voice vanishing. “Oh, I am so sorry,” he croons after a few moments, pretty lips twisting. “Darling, I am terribly sorry.” 

Satine looks quizzically down at him, trying to think through her head of soft felts to find the reason for such a devout apology. “Whatever for?” 

He hesitates barely a moment, brief enough she can’t even be certain it’s a hesitation and not simply an indrawn breath. “For hurting your wrist earlier.” 

The night passes like this, in little bursts of bewildering conversations, of fear for the future contrasted with heady contentment at being safe and dry and warm enough, and with Ben. He tips his head on his hand where he’s watching her across the fire, body barely stilled after his laughter at one of her little anecdotes. 

“Satine.” 

When did she tell him her full name? Probably he found it out, somehow, he seems like that sort of a man, only still a boy. Are they still children, she wonders darkly, after all that they have seen? All that the galaxy found fit to make them suffer surely cannot make them anything but adults now. “Ben,” she teases in response, smiling as she curls tighter into his cloak. 

“You will still be here when I wake up.” 

Yes, she will, she knows. That glorious warmth spreads in her once more, from something more than the fire; as though his words hold the secret to heat in them. “Goodnight, Ben,” says the young woman softly, voice soft enough his breath catches in his chest. Before she finally passes into sleep, she thinks she sees him curl his head down into his hands and swear, but she can’t be at all sure that it wasn’t simply a half-dream. 

In the shop his hand is heavy on her lower back through the corto-silk of her dress, and she laughs at his snide criticisms of the modern literature table, tugs him to the next level up where the classics and ancients are, real flimsi books with the text in small-printed Basic or the curling language of Modern Stewjoni. They have a very particular smell, a little dusty but also old and loved, and it makes her want to cry, even though she knows it makes her sweetheart smile and tip his head back, just as he’s doing now. Why is it that he does it? Can he sense something from the motes of ancient tomes, do they unlock secrets of the past to him? He is no Jedi; she would not be surprised if his skills edged on the arcane. 

“I will buy you any of them,” she promises, a little drunk on young love. He laughs, blue eyes glinting, and shakes his head. “Oh, stop,” scolds the young woman, “I can afford to, and I want to treat you. For being good to me.” 

His eyes suddenly burn, the hint of gold in the blue irises, and her breath catches at the thrill of danger raising the hairs on her neck. Electricity, like the lightning storm when he found her again, like when they skidded down the wooden halls in their socks to make their hair float. “Good?” 

“Yes,” she breathes, and is left stumbled when he straightens up from the slouch she hadn’t noticed, reaching up for a book a little out of their reach. It flies into his hand with a near-invisible nudge of the Force. 

His scarred hands flick through the pages, silvery burns and white fading lines catching the light. “I suppose I am good to you, aren’t I?” 

The enchantment breaks with a shake of her hair, but she smiles at him, and agrees, and ignores the coil of dark-feelings in her stomach, because Ben is lovely, and kind, and clever and strong and a fighter and a romantic heart and he has that quietly pleased truthful little half-smile that only comes when she’s said something she means. Over the last weeks, since she lost her way and he found her in the dark and brought her tenderly – so tenderly, for such broken and calloused hands, too tenderly to be aught but deliberate – he truly has been good to her, unnecessarily gentle. No Mando’ad is weak, unprepared; Sundari is rougher than this place. But the warmth of him, of his support, has been so comforting. 

“So shall I buy you that, cyar’ika?” 

Ben’s burning blue-grey eyes dart to hers, and she pales – she has overstepped the boundary he set her, that she not get attached (said so teasingly, but enough of an undercurrent to be understood as soberly as it warranted). “Cyar’ika, Tina?” 

Her eyes are uncomfortably wide, her lips tight in alarm, as though by preventing any more words passing out of her she can stop the inevitable. He will leave her alone, and she is terrified of his loss, unable to comprehend sleeping without his heat near her or his arm proprietary over her waist on the mornings when they wake up far too close together, sharing bodyheat through base layers. For all that the space between them is a matter of feet, she may as well have spaced herself at the opposite end of the parsec. 

“Tina.” 

With difficulty she swallows the lump in her throat. Why is it she can face the trials of Coruscant and run through a battlefield with minimal protection, but as soon as he looks down his nose at her she’s just some love-struck teenager who can’t speak? Where does this base fear originate, the horror she has of losing the heat in her head his words give her? 

Ben growls at her, low, vibrating. Perhaps it is naïve of her, but she had never thought he would be growling at her, despite having witnessed his violence towards others. But then, it is always other people, is it not? Never yourself. “Tina. You will answer me.” 

“I love you,” she blurts out, immediately hating herself for it, because now he will leave her. He will go. Stupid little girl. Di'kutla adiik. 

Just as anticipated, his expression shutters, and he turns away. She deserves that, Satine supposes bitterly, deserves for him to leave her up here in the bookshop all by herself, alone and a little lost. 

“Tina.” Ben has reached the stairs. “Do not tell them my name, understand? Don’t think about me.” 

Tears blur him before her eyes, so she looks back down at the floorboards and nods. “Alright,” Ben, she wants to say regally; the words are stuck in her throat, trapped in her neck. 

“I’ll see you again.” 

Wait – did he say – 

But he is gone, and she has no answers, and the warmth of his presence in her mind is fading away, all except for that hot burn of his final command. Don’t think about me. 

I love you, she thinks almost violently, because she is Mando and rebellion is in her blood, I love you. I will not stop. 

She curls into a ball in the little refresher room. When the water-shower is turned on, the tiny room is filled by steam and splashed up water drops. The first time, she hadn’t expected it, and her towel had got wet; she had slept with wet hair, Ben’s face and the callouses of his hands spoiling her rest. When she dreams of him, she wakes up grasping fruitlessly at the memories which slide out of her reach like so many bubbles. Here like this, in the wet dark, she can trick herself into remembering, into remembering the flashing lightning that half-blinded her; the rasp of his growing beard-fuzz, the water running down their skin in icy rivulets. 

“Ben,” she says, daring to speak his name when she is alone. Her head aches, when she does this, but what does she care when all she must do is handle a little hurt? Satine is a daughter of Mandalore, soft as they may accuse her of being. “Ben.” 

A knock comes on the door of the room, startling her. Wide-eyed, breath caught in terror, she stays on the floor, knees drawn up to her chest, eyes screwed tight against the dark. Water runs over her, her shirt sticking to her skin: perhaps if she is very still the knocking person shall leave. It feels childish to hope so. Perhaps it is her Jedi; that hope is even frailer. She lost them in the storm, how long ago that seems. 

“Tina?” The voice echoes through her room. Her heart begs her to rise, to open the door, to welcome him in, but her brain warns her it is unwise. After all, hadn’t she been left alone by him? Has he not hurt her more than any other person in her life? “Tina, darling, there’s been a development on Mandalore.” 

She shrinks tighter into herself, hiding; she doesn’t want to know what has happened to her people this time, doesn’t want to know whatever new pain the universe has dealt to her and her beautiful home. “Go away, Ben,” hisses the young woman, the phantom weight of a circlet on her brow, “go away.” 

“You don’t mean that. If you don’t mean it, you’ll let me in.” 

Grudgingly, she will admit he is right, that she doesn’t truly want to him to go. Warmth is rising through her, the warmth she only feels around him – warmth of love, safety. She didn’t mean it, no, but that doesn’t mean she wants him back in her life. 

“Tina? If you don’t want me to leave, let me in.” 

Force damn it. Reluctant, she rises to her feet, switching off the shower and wrapping a towel or two around herself. The door-locks click open easily. This little hostel is safe by dint of its simplicity, not for the security measures. Ben, she is sure, will not be impressed. 

He is smiling at her widely even before the door opens, loose tendrils of reddish hair brushing those pretty lips in his pretty face. “Hello Satine,” says her knight-errant tenderly, in the tone she remembers from their weeks together, the tone that secretly means I missed you. 

Damn her, for she can’t be angry at him. “Hello, Ben.” 

Every hard muscle and shining scar of his body softens under her cautious gaze, the leery wariness of heartbreak. Of a sudden, Satine is made viscerally aware of her scattered possessions, few though they are, of the rumpled covers of the uncomfortable bed, of the steamy air still floating from the ‘fresher. At least the fan is loud enough to fill some of the silence. 

He doesn’t look past her. Like a kyr’oya’kar on the scent, fixated on the goal, she thinks; if he is the wolf, what is she? The child in the tales? A deer, fangs too blunt to wound enough to free herself? The warmth in her body is spreading, rising up to her head luxuriously, like a lothcat stretching in front of a fire in a dark room. “Are you well?” 

Satine shrugs, looking down for a moment before bracing herself up to meet his blue-storm-grey eyes. “My home is burning.” 

Sorrow, sympathetic grief showing on his face. “I know, darling. There has been a development.” Finally, after that worrying comment, he looks around her room, taking in the sheer lack of possessions in her room. “I can take you back to my room. Only a little way across town,” Ben assures her, “I will bring you back here if you’re uncomfortable.” 

She leans back a little. “Come with you, after you just left me in the bookshop? Are you serious?” Satine is – incredulous, really, at the audacity of him offering her company after it was he who abandoned her. “A bookshop, Ben! You left me alone!” 

“Now, look here,” Ben starts, frowning, brushing his hair out of his face. His brows crease, lips tightening into a line that is less pretty than it is threatening; she had forgotten that all those scars mean he is a warrior. 

Her hand flies up imperiously regardless, finger pointed directly at his nose in the same move she used to pull on overconfident advisors, a silent order for him to shut up and let her finish. “Ben, I have been alone ever since you left me. Nobody knows me here; nobody cares for me. I am not the next Duchess of Mandalore, but I’m a poverty-stricken teen. I am barely eighteen years old, Ben,” she cuts off, suddenly uncertain of her point, because now that she is able to see him again, the angles of his face, the softness of his hair, he looks no older than her. How can he understand her grief, the grieving for an entire system of people she always believed that she would lead into a new age of peace and prosperity – the people she lived among and loved? “My home is burning.” 

He nods as if he understands what she is saying. “I know,” he placates gently. “Are you coming?” 

“No, Ben,” Satine snaps, refusing to submit to platitudes, to empty words, “my people are dying. Can you understand that? I am to be their Duchess. This war is my fault. I couldn’t talk fast enough and now my home and my people and everything that entails burns under the boots of Death Watch.” 

Ben grunts, frown deepening on his pretty face. “I’ve had dealings with Kyr’tsad before.” 

“Do not grace them with the respect of a name in mando’a. They're unworthy of that,” she tells him firmly, drained by shouting. All her energy has deserted her, in the wake of the months of running and hiding. Satine Kryze is tired to her very bones. 

His blue-grey eyes narrow. “I can help you. You’re coming with me, Tina.” 

Heat spreads across her, radiating from the point of contact of his hand on her bared upper arm, skin to skin contact that she somehow missed him initiating. Do not go, orders the voice of Bo in her heart, stay away from this siren-man and his war scars, from his hands that tell a tale of battle. Stay far away and keep running, Bo tells her, the voice of her sense of reason. And yet, Ben is warm, warmth in her heart and head and soul, warm words and hot skin. So, the decision is here. Will she go with him? For another minute she wrestles the question, but that warmth fills her up, like the steam of the shower-room. 

Yes, she will go with Ben. Intellectually, she knows that following Ben anywhere is a very poor idea – putting her heart on the line is not a good idea – but still her soul is craving his company, craving to let him protect her. What is going on? She is a daughter of Mandalore, has proven herself to be beskar and fire whilst racing over battlefields. Duchess-to-be Satine Kryze should not be swooning over a pretty, scarred, battlemarked, Ben Cerasi, known vigilante. “Let me pack my bags,” she whispers, her brain admitting defeat. 

She has no home, no people, why retain her dignity? 

“Good,” says Ben, voice warm. “You don’t need to cry.” 

Warmth spreads in her mind, placed there by his soft words. Tears have no place between them, her and him, says the whisper, velvet and cotton and silk. 

“Stay quiet,” orders Ben, as they leave with her bag on his shoulder and his hand low on her back, warm and strong through her cloak, and she goes to argue the order, but her tongue is wrapped in lead in her mouth, despite all her brain’s protests of being ordered around like some foot-soldier or underling. “I’ll have to kill anyone who sees us.” 

Satine is lucid enough to understand that this is not a route that she’d like taken, pacifist as she is. Better to stay silent, than risk that his quip was not a comment meant in jest. 

Ben’s rooms have a refined elegance she’s come to expect from him. The bed is large enough for them both, and he sets her bag on the pillow furthest from the door without asking her which side she would prefer to sleep on; they’ve slept side-by-side enough times that asking is unnecessary. She always sleeps on his left, because he is right handed. He slips out of the room, allowing her a moment to breathe in this new haven from the dark, and she hears him switch something on, a sharp click followed by a low mutter. 

“It is with great regret I must conclude my daughter is lost to us permanently. May she walk in the stars forever,” comes the voice of her father – hard and strong and sad – through the holotelevision, and she gasps, loud, louder than she’d meant to. Her father. The voice of Duke Adonai Kryze. 

Ben is behind her now, hands steady on her elbows. “Satine?” On hearing her name her stupor is broken, tide of grief rising like the summer storms of the water-worlds of Mandalore, endless and infuriated. She buries her head into Ben’s shoulder, torn, because she does love Ben; really, truly, she does, but she loves Mandalore too. What is she without Mandalore? 

He holds her tighter, arms strong and adoring, kisses her hair, nosing through the strands. “It’s alright, love,” he croons into her ear, voice like silk, corto-silk, “I saved him for you; your people will be fine. You can stay here as long as you love me,” he tells her, and she nods, heart still breaking, voice gone too far to tell him no, that she wants to go home, needs to go home. “You will stay as long as you love me.” Satine’s heart is still breaking in her chest, cracked into thousands of razor-sharp beskar shards. 

Sometimes, when he goes on long missions, she stands in the rain and tries to believe she’s here because she wants to be. It must be true, right? He wouldn’t do anything to cause her hurt. 

She presses closer to him in the dark as if by the touch of his skin as he sleeps and the heat of his body the bruises he leaves on her can be faded into naught but hints of the deep pain she is feeling. With his eyes shut, face soothed by sleep from the usual sardonic smile or threatening frown, she can almost imagine that they’re where she always wanted them to be. 

“It’s not fair how much I love you,” whispers the woman, her long fingers spread over his chest. Her lover stirs just a little, and she almost sobs at the urge she has to press into his skin and let the quilt protect her from the outside, from the reality of their lives. “You make me weep, and you make me laugh. How unreasonably in love I am with you.” 

And he doesn’t say anything in response – as he never does, never one to tell her he loves her even if the words slip out of her lips in the daytime – and she lays herself down, tucked warm beside him. Stars float high in the dark, only just visible through the glass of the huge windows, and she wonders how it would be to walk them once more. When did she last pass the stars? How many times since this semblance of marriage began has she left the planet? He grunts, rolling over, arm reaching out to her. When he finds her he tugs her closer, holding her tight. 

He rises, hair still slicked by sweat and her raking fingers. The kitchen holo, when he presses play, is so quiet she wouldn’t even know it was on if this wasn’t what he does too often, and the faintest hint of blue light on the walls just visible through the open door. This is how he tells her he loves her: hot tea, or a glass of weak juice to wake up to, or rising to ensure the children sleep or get fed in the morning. Should she wish it, he would do everything for her, and call it love. 

Perhaps adoration is a better word. Worship. Obsession, even, but she knows that there are lines he won’t cross for her. He is cold, and a little cruel, but not completely without morality. Through the part-open door she hears the baby crying, soft whimpers which tear at her until she sits up, blankets pushed aside; but he has beaten her to the chase, and is there in the sitting room silhouetted in the light, rocking their baby gently as he hums. Should she go to them? It is not right he should always be the one to get up in the night. 

“Do not dare set foot outside of that bed,” her lover scolds through the open door, voice hot. His eyes do not leave the babe in his arms, and he hasn’t even turned to face her, but she knows a command when she hears one, and settles sat up against the headboard as warmth spreads through her limbs. Her back aches, low and throbbing, right where she landed on a log that time when he took her hunting and the horse spooked. It was months ago, now, but it had terrified him into this coddling. “I’ll bring her in, hm?” 

She relaxes back into the pillow. “Very well.” Usually she is asleep, by now, and he always allows her to rest in peace. How often does she rise in the morning to find him laid out on the sofa, a child on his chest and woven blanket tugged up around them? It’s lovely, the care he takes of her, but sometimes she feels that the place he has carved for her is not the place she is meant to occupy in the universe, as though there is something larger that should have been waiting for her, something more than the breathless adoration she holds for their children. 

Something vital. 

Something Mandalorian. 

“Mama!” 

Her heart clenches at the cry, because they are in public and she can’t see her family – where is her son, where is he? Who has taken him, where is he, where are they, where is her family – 

“Satine,” her lover whispers in her ear, enveloping her all at once in his dark cloak as is his way, her knight in earth-toned cloaks. Their son presses into her chest, blue eyes bright and shining, gummy smile broad and unfettered. He has no fear of his father, as well he shouldn’t, because there is nothing Dark in the way her lover holds his children close, guides them to her. “It is alright, love.” 

She chokes, turning her head in to his neck, and hating, hating that she is always afraid of something, of loss or of pain or of waking up and this all being some violent dream. “I thought he was,” she tries to say, but he curls his strong hand over her head, cradling her in his arms as she cradles their son into her own, untangling tiny fingers from the lengths of his father’s coppery hair. “I want to go home.” 

Home, she said, as if this world, as beautiful as it is, is her home – but he is her home now, as broken and crumbling and shadowed at that may be. 

Those beautiful lips curl into a smile. “Let’s go home, then, love,” he says, and for the first time in what feels like many years she thinks that there is something blue like a winter’s sky in his greyed eyes. His gloves are skin-warm, and even though the touch of his bare skin brings her pain, as if her skin is peeling like paint, she finds that she craves it, as though without the truth that is skin-to-skin he is just a mirage and she is left in the marketplace with tears in her eyes, afraid. As though if she should leave her, she is just a barren field of Mandalore, destroyed by war with no good things in it. 

I stand here in the dark  
And you are beside me  
The Dark rises, curls  
But I am safe here.  
As safe as you can be. 

My spine is of beskar,  
My soul is burned.  
I am a scorched wasteland,  
A planet razed to the bones. 

I left my heart there  
Where they trampled it to dust  
In the wake of a war.  
You brought me away,  
And I shouldn’t have let you. 

My ribs are twice-broken  
My mind is a fracture.  
I am a daughter of Manda,  
A wasted destiny. 

You lead me by the hand as though I am a child  
But I know better.  
You are the wolf, howling at the door.  
I am just a girl,  
And you stole me. 

The message comes from Anakin directly to his private comm. How peculiar, for his oldest friend’s brother-padawan to seek him out, he thinks, half in amusement and half concern. The last time he’d received a private message had been when Quinlan had been in a dark patch. They have rarely seen eye to eye in the past, on just about anything, but at least Anakin accepts that he and Quinlan are friends. Calling through to Tina that he needs to go into his office a moment, he shuts the door tight behind him. 

_Something on Geonosis, Ben. Can’t search it. I don’t know what. An event is coming. Quin currently searching Kamino._

And that is worrying. Rumours of Kamino are, well, rumours. Whether the planet even exists is deeply questioned. Cloning facilities, experimental science? Ridiculous. Probably, it’s just some rain-drenched Rim planet of ghost stories and spicers. And yet, when he meditates on the matter, the Force is solemn and pushing. It swirls in low spirals about his feet, darker than usual – darker than it should get. 

“Ben,” his beloved calls through the office door, “evening meal is ready to serve.” 

“I will be but a moment,” he answers, still frowning down at the comm message. It really is very unhelpful of the Force to be so neutral regarding his actions here, especially now he’s spent almost thirty years hearing it protest his actions, cry over his choices. “It really is typical of you to keep your silence now of all times,” he tells the air scoldingly. 

She knows full well that he’s had news; they’ve been together for far too long for her to do anything but. Her vibrant eyes don’t watch as he eats, she doesn’t eye him carefully with her peripheral vision. No, Satine Kryze is smarter, subtler. “Perhaps,” his wife says half-way through the meal, focus on making sure their children are eating and not simply picking their food into shreds, “it would be wise for you to act on whatever it is weighing on you so heavily.” Tina looks steadily at him, still a Duchess to the bone, even now. Her eyes burn him, burn the doubts into certainties, as she always has done. They’re so much stronger together than they are apart. 

“Yes,” Ben agrees quietly, so he dresses in his corto-silks and kisses his family goodbye and tells them to stay hidden, and he gets in a ship, and he goes to Geonosis. In his stomach weighs a feeling. A bad, bad feeling. 

The sabers on his belt are anxious, chiming at him persistently in concern, growing louder as he settles onto the red dust of the planet oh-so-far from his home. The sandy dust floats up even as the engines shut down, leaving grime everywhere. 

Ben decides no good will come of sitting around, climbs down and stands on this barren planet. “Right. Geonosis. What now,” he asks of nobody, red dust sticking to his tongue. The rocks around him are totally silent, seeming to absorb the sounds of his movements. He is reminded of many past stakeouts, smuggling things past barriers erected by people with too much confidence in their own abilities to keep him out of places he shouldn’t be. When has anything ever stopped him? Many years of active warzones mean he manages not to strike out when Quinlan appears at his back, stepped out of some shadow or other. 

“Long time,” greets the Kiffar genially. 

Ben laughs at his friend’s antics. “What the fuck is going on? I have kids, my old friend. I’m too old for other people’s wars.” 

Quin grins, teeth as hard as ever, tattoo wrinkling. “And I’ve got Aayla,” he retorts without any real heat, that easy camaraderie they’ve always fallen into. “You in?” 

Well, obviously. “Stupid question.” They shroud themselves in the Force, slinking through the caves and tunnels following the faint guidance of the Force. Something is building, brewing. A storm. A war. Ben shivers; wars he chooses to aid are one matter, but this war will be a war with the Jedi, and he doesn’t want that. Jedi shouldn’t be made into warriors; look at what happened to him. 

They – they are dead. So many people, dead. And he called them friends, several of them, when a child and in the years since. The Force is screaming and sobbing, demanding retribution, demanding that someone pay, and he has never been able to resist the Dark how he should. The Padawans, too, lying where they fell, shot down. 

These are the Jedi. He is not one of them, but there are those of them whom he loves, calls family, and they are in pain, falling too fast, and he has been in wars for far too many decades. 

He can recognise a lost cause. 

_come, brother, soldier, general, leader of children, the fighter of forgotten fights, come, come, use me and protect them, there is naught to fear when you have power_

He has no room for fear, as he swings his saber, back-to-back with Quinlan once more, Aayla a little ways from them, and Tholme and Anakin close too. 

_rage rage rage, little one, o envoy of the forgotten ways of the grey, rage and rage and take, take, take, take from those who would hurt yours_

He is furious. Fury is better than fear; fear of loss, of pain, of never seeing his beautiful wife and perfect children again. This is not to be how it ends; he refuses to allow it to be. 

The step into the dark, after all, is an easy one to take, when you already dance the line of the greyness. 

“Come home to us.” 

His eyes are burning, and he has no tears left to shed, and his crystals scream with him, and he raises his blade. 

Ben Cerasi never loses a fight. He sure as all the stars in the sky this one. It’s only one step, into the Dark, when he’s this fragile on the everchanging foundations of his Force Signature, only one step to feel the crackling over his knuckles, the sorrow of his Kyber crystals shifting into a raging scream. The Jedi around him flinch back, all except for Quinlan. They always had said they’d go together. 

Quinlan curls his legs up onto the seat, knocks his glass of tihaar back in one. “And then what? After we end this war, what will you do, now you’re Fallen?” 

He shrugs, looking into his glass, feeling too thin and scarred and damaged by years of wars fought on behalf of other people. “Don’t know, never really thought about it.” 

“Liar,” says his friend quietly, seriously. It was a lie, and they know they can both taste it in the Force. 

Ben cracks a small smile, his blue-grey eyes flaring briefly with a burning fire, gold-orange-yellow, hard and cold and cruel and violent, before he gets it under control again. Even now, a day after, he still flinches from his reflection, the fire now burning him inside-out. “I have a few ideas.” 

Quin stretches out, clicking his spine quietly. He sets his empty glass down on the floor. “Need someone to keep you in the Light?” 

A slow smile, honest and true and loving, grows on Ben’s face. “You offering, brother?” 

“Should’ve offered long time ago,” he admits. Static crackles in the air; his hair, loose whilst it dries after a real water shower, floats a little, and purple sparks float through Ben’s. “I don’t think you’d have Fallen if you were a Jedi, but you’re not. You’re a warrior vigilante. Don’t think I didn’t catch on, by the way. Vosant is me and Bant, is Siren a title or a name?” 

Ben sighs. “Siri and Garen. But it became a title.” 

“You’re going to need to be far more careful than you are now,” warns Quinlan. “You’ve already done enough that the Order would put you down.” 

He knows, and says nothing. What if it happens again? What if he starts to use his abilities on Satine again, like he did when they were young, when he was stronger than he ever considered and should have known better? “Keep them safe,” he says, safe from me, from this war, from these cloned soldiers. 

“Tina,” he breathes, his heart pounding as she runs out of their home, down the steps he cut into the path for her after she slipped on the path one winter, her Kryze-blue dress fluttering like wings behind her. “Satine!” 

She slams into his arms just as he starts to run to her, holding him as tight as she can reach, and she feels so right in his hold, like this is how they’re meant to be. “I’ve missed you,” she gasps. Pulling away, she glares into his face. “Don’t ever leave me like that again, Ben Cerasi.” Her hands stroke his arms in fast jerking motions, angry and relieved all at once.

He laughs. “Of course not,” he promises, stroking her blonde hair back from her face, “I would never even think of it, love.” 

“You’d better not,” she warns, and he takes her seriously. Satine Kryze is a pacifist, but Tina Cerasi has gained a reputation, and he knows he would let her kill him if she wanted to, if it would make her happy. She would do it.

“They call you General,” observes Quinlan quietly. “They’d follow you anywhere, after you saved them.” 

He knows. He doesn’t like it; their faith is sticky, cloying, hot and vibrant in a way he simply is not, not any longer. “Ben Cerasi is a soldier, forged in war. I know how to save people.” Quin hums, tossing his saber in his hand. When he raises his head from watching the drills below, he catches a glimpse of his reflection, irises flaring low orange. He closes his eyes, thinks of Tina and the children, remembers her warmth and kindness, her indomitability, her forgiveness. How very little he deserves her. 

His new Commander approaches – Cody, that is his name. An adult the age of a child. A fabricated army, built on the impulse of visions, built with some nefarious purpose he hasn’t divined yet. “Sir,” starts the Commander, offering a datapad. 

“Just Ben is fine,” frowns Ben, opening his eyes, uncomfortable still in his title of General. It’s one thing to be a General on some small conflict, but another altogether to be consider equivalent to a Jedi. Of course, that’s why he has Quin: they’re here to balance each other’s worse excesses. 

The man pauses. “Very well, Ben.” 

Quinlan pushes off the rail, dark eyes heavy with grief. They all lost too much on Geonosis. “We used to say we’d see our nightmares out together,” he says abruptly. 

“We will,” Ben promises. “I’ve been warring since I was a child. We’ll get to go home soon.” 

“General?” 

“Cody.” 

“That war, did you win?” 

He stills, hands heavy on his sabers. Quinlan drops a heavy hand on his shoulder. “No.”

**Author's Note:**

> Writing the Ben scenes was just "I don't want to write this but I want to read it so I guess I have to".


End file.
